Vancouver garage rockers the Pack A.D. album release tour comes to the Queen’s

Last year Maya Miller and Becky Black of the Vancouver psychedelic garage rock band the Pack A.D. charged into the studio at Vancouver’s Rain City Recorders to record a new album true to the band’s rapid-fire punk roots.

The result was Dollhouse, a set of nine tracks clocking in at a quick 28:14. The record came out in October, just over a year after the group’s previous album, Positive Thinking. Drummer Miller said the plan was to rattle off a series of songs in a limited time frame.

“We just wanted make an album that we liked – that’s always important – and also we definitely had the goal of making it a short album, which we did accomplish. It’s only nine songs long, it’s not even a half hour long and that was definitely something that we planned on. We wanted to just have a get-in-there-and-get-out kind of album,” she said.

“It kind of falls in line closer to how we feel playing our live shows, you know? It’s more exciting to do the shorter songs and have them be sort of a little more punk in attitude that way.”

Miller said she and singer and guitarist Black were eager to put out new music so soon after Positive Thinking, rather than “waiting around.”

“You don’t need the same sort of buildup period of, ‘Hey, our album’s coming out in six months.’ No one’s got time for that kind of thing so we wanted to make an album and kind of release it as soon as possible,” she said.

“For us it’s getting back to how we used to release albums. We used to release once a year and then at one point we didn’t and we had a gap and gaps used to be more common.”

Before hitting the road for a North American tour back in October no one outside the band had heard any of the new tracks. Miller said the tunes “felt right” as they were being crafted.

“Every single thing was new to the record and [we] hadn’t played them live. They were all brand new they were not road tested,” Miller said.

“In a sense, when you’re coming up with a song in a jam space, you’re already playing it sort of live and you can kind of hear how that sounds. And it already felt that these are songs that will be great live.”

Nanaimo residents will get their chance to hear those songs for themselves when The Pack A.D. comes to the Queen’s on Thursday, Jan. 25. It’s currently one of the group’s last dates before heading to Europe in the Spring.

WHAT’S ON … The Pack A.D. performs at the Queen’s on Thursday, Jan. 25. Doors open at 7 p.m., show at 8 p.m. Admission is $18 in advance, $20 at the door.